Azerbaijan observes day of mourning for air crash victims. russia-ukraine war news
The cause of the crash, which killed 38 of the 67 people on board the Embraer 190 aircraft, is under investigation.
Azerbaijan is observing a day of mourning for the victims of an air crash that killed 38 people. At least 29 people survived the deadly accident on Christmas Day.
Azerbaijan observed a nationwide moment of silence on Thursday, with national flags lowered, traffic halted at noon and signals from ships and trains across the country.
Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared a day of mourning on Thursday and canceled his planned visit to Russia for the informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet countries.
Aliyev’s office said the president “ordered to initiate immediate measures to investigate the causes of the disaster”.
A passenger jet of the country’s flag carrier crashed near the city of Aktau in western Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
The Embraer 190 plane was supposed to fly northwest from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead flew too far over the Caspian Sea.
speculation on cause
The cause of the crash is under investigation, but some aviation and military experts said the plane may have been accidentally shot at by Russian air defense systems as it was flying over an area where Ukrainian drone activity had been reported.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the claims.
During a press conference on Wednesday, President Aliyev said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash but added that weather conditions caused the plane to deviate from its planned route.
“The information I have been given is that due to bad weather conditions the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny and headed towards Aktau airport, where it crashed while landing,” he said.
According to Kazakh officials, the 67 people on board the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian citizens, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyzstani citizens. Five of them were crew members.
Azerbaijan Airlines initially said the plane passed through a flock of birds before withdrawing the statement.
Eleven of the injured are in intensive care, according to the Kazakh Health Ministry. Azerbaijan state news agency Azertec reported that 12 survivors were being flown to Azerbaijan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Aliyev and “expressed his condolences in connection with the accident”, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news conference.
Putin later said at the opening of a meeting of CIS leaders in St. Petersburg that a Russian Emergencies Ministry had been dispatched to Aktau with medical personnel and other equipment.
